Porter talks a good game, expects Astros to follow

Astros first-year manager Bo Porter is proving that communication skills are in his wheelhouse.

Astros first-year manager Bo Porter is proving that communication...

KISSIMMEE, Fla. - Bo Porter bounces around at spring training - energetic, intense, focused - as if he is in charge of a championship ballclub.

But the first-year Astros manager has a team that oddsmakers place the over-under on wins at 591/2. You don't have to be a math whiz to recognize that such a win total in a 162-game season wouldn't be particularly good.

OK, he isn't delusional. It isn't that he is planning on hoisting a World Series trophy at the end of the 2013 season, and for all I know, Porter might be ecstatic if the Astros win 70 games this season. He just isn't about to tell his team that.

To Porter, talk is not cheap. Actually, for him, it is an art.

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Sit with him in his office at the Osceola County Stadium, as I did Thursday morning, and you're likely to leave wanting to lace up the cleats, put on a helmet and step into the batter's box.

Little wonder Astros owner Jim Crane said Porter blew him away during the interview process. Players feel the same way.

"The first time I talked to him on the phone, I hung up, looked at my wife and said, 'You know what, this guy is going to be a great leader,' " said former Rice pitcher Philip Humber, whom the Astros claimed off waivers in the offseason and is with his fifth major league team. "He's just a great communicator."

Even when he isn't talking to his players, Porter communicates. He believes environment matters. So there are messages posted throughout the facility, the most striking of which is a flywheel on the wall that has 24 motivational thoughts, winning ingredients and rewards: "'Stros win!"

The only two matching slots on this Astros' wheel of fortune are the ones with the team logo and a World Series trophy.

Signs, sayings and slogans don't win games, players do. But Porter is after whatever mental edge he can garner. He refuses to set a limit on what his team can accomplish and has paid almost no attention to the experts' dire predictions for this season's Astros.

"Everybody is going to have predictions, but I told the team not to listen to the noise," Porter said. "There is not much separation between winners and losers, not at (the major league) level."

Predictions imperfect

Porter looked at all 162 Astros games last season. He believes there were 35-40 games that if the Astros had won one of what he describes as "break points" of a contest, the outcomes could have been different.

"You can look at it as that's just how bad they were, or that's just how good they could have been," Porter said.

Oh, I have a choice? Then put me down for the former.

Porter, who follows the advice of Bobby Cox and rarely reads local newspapers or listens to sports talk radio, isn't ready to buy that.

"Nobody can go back and determine that," he said. "Nobody really knows."

If Porter is so open-minded about just how bad the worst team in baseball was a year ago, a team that won a paltry 55 games, imagine his level of optimism about this year's squad. His squad.

"Predictions and projections are experts in a field taking quantitative information," Porter said. "The one thing they can't account for or calculate in the outcome is what lies inside of a player.

"You can't predict that. Your attitude, your work ethic, your drive, that's not on paper anywhere. In competition, the majority of the time those are the determining factor. Those things you can't account for in predictions."

Light always on

Some things Porter can't fix with talk. He can't turn a puny, below-average singles hitter into a big-time slugger, at least not without pharmaceuticals. But there was a desperate need for attitude adjustment for a franchise that lost 106 games in 2011 and 107 games in 2012.

General manager Jeff Luhnow, considered one of the bright minds in baseball, introduced a phrase to the franchise last year: the Astros' Way.

Porter uses it as well. To him, the only way is a championship way.

"You can't start one way then try to crank it up," he said. "You want to be that light-switch guy, then one day you're going to walk in and hit the switch and the light will be blown.

"You need to make sure your light is working every day."

Oh yeah, Porter's light is on. He carries himself as if he is in charge of a championship-caliber ballclub.

He isn't - at best it will take a few years and a host of new players to get there - but clearly that is the destination.

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